The Brooklyn Art Museum has a Twitter account and at last check, they had over 21,000 people following them.  The Museum uses the account to tweet about happenings at the Museum such as events, announcements, new blog posts from the Museum blog and to interact with patrons. They also tweet links to their other social media accounts such as Facebook where they have they have a Group with almost 800 members. According to recent Facebook statistics, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, with over 2,500 fans, is one of the fastest growing Facebook fan pages with a weekly growth rate of over 600%.

The Museum of Modern Art in New York is also on Twitter with almost 12,000 people following them. They are tweeting about events such as an Art Hunt, the announcing of their website redesign, to answer questions from people and to tweet about Art in the news. Both museum twitter sites indicate the name of the staff who are doing the tweeting. This is important because even though the accounts represent an entity, people prefer to interact on Twitter with a person.

A quick search on Twitter for other arts organizations include the Atlanta Symphony, The Chicago Symphony, the New World Symphony, the Baltimore Symphony, the Houston Ballet, the Pennsylvania Ballet, and the San Francisco ballet, while not actively tweeting, has gone in and “reserved” their twitter name for future use. The Smithsonian has also joined the Twitter world.

A blog post of an interview with Marc van Bree, the PR coordinator with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra about their social media and online efforts. In referring to their Facebook fan page, they offered people the chance to win a new CD of one of their recent recordings and within a week they had over a thousand fans.  He notes they have primarily used the page for distributing information about the organization but they would like to see it become more interactive with their fan posting content and interacting with each other. Over half of their fans are under the age of 24 and 85% of them are under the age of 34 compared with the average age of classical music patrons which is usually between 50 and 60. Facebook is an additional avenue by which they are able to reach out and connect with a younger fan base.

YouTube is another increasingly popular platform being utilized by arts organizations and non-profits. The Anaheim Ballet’s YouTube channel has over 500,000 channel views.  The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust also has a YouTube channel which they use to provide information and insight about the city’s fine arts community. The Pennsylvania Ballet is using their YouTube channel to post video of performances, interviews with choreographers and chronicling the building of stage sets.

A recent article on how Philadelphia arts organizations are utilizing social media as a way to connect and engage a younger demographic. Almost every arts organization in the city has a Facebook page and others are using Flickr and YouTube as ways to reach their audiences and patrons. The Arden Theatre which has a Twitter, MySpace and a Facebook account, recently promoted reduced ticket rates on their Facebook page and increased the number of fans to their page by over a hundred. They are quoted as saying that they believe these efforts have resulted in a more loyal audience who better understands their overall mission.
Shawn Stone, the Philadelphia Ballet’s marketing director hits the nail on the head about why arts organizations or non-profits can benefit from using social media, “Using social media and e-mail marketing is a much-less-expensive way of marketing. It’s more targeted and can save your organization money. It’s also creating a direct line of communication with potential audiences of the future.”

Social media is creating new marketing avenues that arts organizations and non-profits are taking advantage of even as budgets continue to shrink. Not only does it seem to be helping them to connect with younger and target audiences, it’s also about having a strategy for getting the results and outcomes they want.

What non-profits or arts organizations have you seen using Social Media?